Sound - it cannot intentionally be this bad can it!? Thread - Dawnstar

I have a PC with basic Realtek HD Audio - nothing fancy but it's managed OK with almost every game I've thrown at it (W7-64 bit)

With Dawnstar tho, sound is appallingly bad. Effects seem to be randomly generated and have no 'position' in space, everything has the same volume - as if it's happening right next to you.

That utterly ruins any gameplay because you've no idea what's going on/where fire is coming from/whether you're hitting your target - it's also migraine-inducing. It's like being inside a can and people are beating on it!!!

In one fight the game decided to repeatedly play a sample which sounded like a piano being dropped from a great height - over and over and over. No music, no other sounds, just that one sound repeating - I had to quit the game before my head exploded...

I can't be intentionally this bad can it? Are there any options to rein-this-in and could you maybe check that sounds are being assigned some location so that they don't all sound LOUD!?!?

p.s. yes, I know, space is silent - yada yada - tbh, right now that might be preferrable!!

What version of the game are you playing? There were quite a few sound issues that were fixed in 1.021.

Also if you could give more specific examples of levels I can take a better look at it.

1.021 - the 'piano falling down the stairs' sounds came in the first fight you get into with the Aether Pylons after the first docking - I've not re-braved that fight yet, one migraine a week is enough.

As an example of the horrific sound 'placing' tho - see this video (taken after the latest update was applied today)

Dl.dropbox.com

Ignore the poor resolution, I chopped-it-down to make it a quick download - it's the sound we're interested in.

Note that there's no action around me at the start, but there's loads of 'sounds' which vary from loud to VERY LOUD - when I start firing those 'sounds' are louder than my guns but I've no idea what they are coming from - and everything is drowning-out the music too - it's a mess...

It can't be meant to be like that!? It's like playing a game with random noises played over the top of it - sound is super-important in 3D games, it helps people place enemies (both direction and distance) - none of that is happening here...

I assume it's either an issue relating to the features (or lack of them) in my soundcard - or your sound guy is deaf!?

Note: Unity (which you use to develop this I think??) has had issues with Realtek Sound chips in the past - but you're going to find probably 20-30% of your customers have them so...

It sounds like there's something going on with the aether pylons that is messing up, it's likely that their attacks aren't being modified by the volume controls. Sorry for the annoyance, but it should be easy to fix and upload into the next patch, will definetly take a look.

The migrane-inducing sound issues should be fixed in1.021, are you still having that sort of issue? Or just random loud noises?

Edit: Went ahead and looked at the aether pylon and it was missing a script that was causing it to not be modified by the player's volume properly. Also found that some enemy rockets were not being modified properly either. Sorry about the issue. Some of these problems can be hard to track down while testing. If often takes a certain player with certain preferences to find them.

Edited by: WraithEnt

I agree I'm getting some strange sound levels as well... I look forward to the next patch!

Hopefully we can release a new patch this weekend. I'm not sure if Desura approves patches on the weekend though, so it might be Monday or Tuesday, but it'll have a lot of little tweaks (working around the clock!)